Various grinding and polishing machines have been proposed to prepare connectors having a desired end face surface. Examples are shown in Saito et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,007,209: Moulin, U.S. Pat. No. 4,905,415, and others. A coupler end face having an optical fiber distal end projecting from a surrounding ferrule is ground, normally on a pad of some sort. A time-consuming preparatory step involves preparation of the projecting fiber tip. If the tip is too short, it may not be polishable; if too long, it can perforate the grinding pad.
The optical fiber distal ends are often secured in their ferrules by an adhesive such as epoxy. In practice, excess epoxy must also be ground off, increasing the time necessary for the grinding process. A fast and accurate method for preparing the coupler end faces would be an improvement in the art.